Word: albanians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Months of deepening tension between its bitterly divided national republics and ethnic groups have brought Yugoslavia dangerously close to civil war. In the autonomous province of Kosovo, striking ethnic Albanian lead and zinc miners protesting a strident campaign by Serbians to tighten their grip touched off a wave of demonstrations. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians joined the strike, forcing the resignations of provincial Communist Party boss Rahman Morina and other officials considered to be puppets of Serbia...
...Belgrade half a million resentful Serbs chanting "Kosovo is Serbian!" demanded a drastic expansion of their control over the province and stiff retaliatory measures against the ethnic Albanian majority. The spiraling unrest drove Raif Dizdarevic , leader of Yugoslavia's collective presidency, to dispatch paramilitary units and tanks into Kosovo while banning all public gatherings. The unrest also exacerbated the rift between Serbia and the republic of Slovenia...
...leadership vacuum coincided with bitter ethnic tensions in the autonomous province of Kosovo. Though the province is part of the Serbian republic, Albanians account for at least 77% of its 1.9 million inhabitants, a proportion that continues to increase. Fears of Albanian irredentism and tales of rape and murder of Serbs in Kosovo by Albanians stirred many of Yugoslavia's 8 million Serbs to demand a crackdown on Kosovo and tough leadership to implement it. The man and the hour met in 1986 when Slobodan Milosevic rose to power in the Serbian Communist Party and soon stirred up a wave...
...Serbs complain that the Kosovo Albanians have launched a campaign of terror and rape to drive them out of the heavily Albanian province. Says Radomir Smiljanic, a well-known Serbian writer: "The harassment of women has become so common that Serbs have to accompany their wives and daughters to work and school." Officials in Kosovo vehemently deny the charges, and non- Serbs elsewhere agree they have been wildly exaggerated by the Serbian press...
Meanwhile, authorities have had to cope with Yugoslavia's long-simmering ethnic tensions. The worst problem is the impoverished southern province of Kosovo, where once dominant Serbs are now outnumbered almost 9 to 1 by ethnic Albanians, many of whom seek independence from Belgrade. Animosity has run high since Yugoslav troops crushed ethnic Albanian riots in 1981. The Serbs complain of rising Albanian persecution in the form of rapes, murders and cattle blindings. Hostility mounted last month when Serbian newspapers quoted former Yugoslav Vice President Fadilj Hodza, a top-ranking ethnic Albanian Communist, as sardonically telling army-reserve officers that...